Contempt of Court; Contempt for Americans

Winter weather, Cairo and the Super Bowl are sucking up all the oxygen in Pravda’s world, but in the real world of Americans engaged more than ever with what is happening in their own country, there is an issue about to take center stage in the nation’s political discourse: the Obama administration’s contempt of court in two very visible cases.

The first, chronologically, is the federal court order striking down the Obama administration’s moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico—which the court found to be wholly unsupported by evidence, and in fact the product of deliberate distortion of the findings of oil industry experts who did not believe the problems with the BP oil rig justified the sweeping moratorium. The Obama administration ignored the court’s ruling, and proceeded with the moratorium.

The second is the federal court decision finding the entirety of Obamacare unconstitutional. (If you want a sterling read of American history and Constitutional law, read the opinion). Unless this decision is stayed by an appellate court, the effect of the ruling is to nullify the law, thereby making any further action by the Obama administration to implement or enforce Obamacare illegal.

Pravda would like to believe these are matters of legal complexity that the American people don’t understand. They believe Americans have grown accustomed to back-and-forth allegations of improper judicial activism, such that nobody knows right from wrong anymore in any judicial decision. Ergo, Americans will quietly and passively accept that following the law is optional for the politically powerful, and the Obama administration’s blatant contempt of court will never make the radar screen of public concern.

They could not be more wrong.

These two cases could not be simpler; they could not illustrate more vividly exactly what the meaning of ‘contempt’ is. And much, much more important, the underlying subject matters of both cases are already front and center as matters of public concern.

Americans are paying more and more at the gas pump; unemployment is higher and higher—including especially in the Gulf states where thousands worked in offshore drilling; the Middle East as a source of oil has never seemed more volatile and unreliable; the environmental damage from the BP oil spill turned out to have been wildly exaggerated and actually relatively minor; this administration trumps up the case for a Gulf-wide drilling moratorium that is struck down by a federal court and then implements it anyway. Americans are far past nuanced legal analysis; their question is: what the hell is going on? Who do these Obama administration people think they are? What exactly is their agenda?

And Americans know that none of the answers are good. Common sense is flashing the warning: there is an unmistakable intent on the part of this administration to do harm to America; to make her more vulnerable; to damage private industry. It is criminal behavior, and it is finally manifesting itself as just that: contempt of the American system of law.

The same goes for the court decision finding Obamacare unconstitutional. The American people despise this law. They despise the way it was passed; they despise its contents; they despise the lies they have been told about its impacts; they have in every election available to them made clear that they want it repealed. Their instinctive repulsion to it is validated by Judge Vinson’s decision. They don’t need to know any legal niceties; they know the American government is not supposed to operate the way it did in passing this abomination; they know the federal government can’t make them buy or not buy anything; and they know they don’t want the federal government in the middle of every healthcare decision they have to make. But what do they hear from the Obama administration? More defiance—not just defiance of the will of the people but now also defiance of the rule of law and of the Constitution.

Americans do not buy the idea that every President does this. They may know it is officially called ‘contempt of court’ but increasingly, they see and feel it as contempt for America and for the American people. With every day that goes by, they realize that something is fundamentally wrong with Obama and those who surround him. They do not recognize this behavior as American. It is anti-American, and it is criminal. And now the courts have agreed.

Americans will not put up with criminals in the White House.

Paul Gable

February 3, 2011